Search Results for:

%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD %EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD %EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD %EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD %EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD %EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD %EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD insta---batmanapollo

May 31st

…included in the latest installment of their FIFA series. Mary Hamilton talked about the predictably terrible reactions to this absolutely minor effort at inclusion.

In Fifa 15, the last instalment of the franchise, there are more than 16,000 players. All of them are male. (Many of them are not as good at football as the women’s World Cup players.) There are 23 players in a World Cup squad. This suggests that approximately 1.7% of the players in Fifa 16 will be female.

Elsewhere, Megan Condis looked at the consequences of Rust‘s decision to randomly assign skin…

September Roundup: Globetrotting

…play express a national identity? How does your sense of place shift when you play with others from a different region? As a developer, what are the unexpected quirks of working with an international staff? Why do you think that videogame adventurers always need to tour the world’s hottest locations to prevent the end of days? Tell us about playing esports in different regions, traveling to promote a game, and the cultural particularities that come to light through play. How do games act as a sort of gateway to globetrotting? Robert What

“My life as an Instagram filter”:…

January 31st

…far as to say that all trolling has a version of politics; even those trolls who claim to do it just for fun have a stake in protecting that fun. It’s what’s behind the fun, or what’s truly at stake, that’s of more interest.”

Oscar Strik examined the way that depictions of racism often end up using fictional settings to depoliticise the subject matter, by separating it from the systems of oppression we participate in outside of fictional settings. The piece is itself something of a roundup of excellent writing on the topic, citing Sidney Fussell, Yusef Cole…

November 5th

…addressing cultural appropriation in Mario games.

  • ‘Super Mario Odyssey’ Review: Nintendo’s Surreal, Candy-Colored Triumph | WIRED Julie Muncy highlights the disconnected mashup of cultural symbols, alongside the absurdist extension of a playful internal logic, to explain the artful ridiculousness of this title.

    • “Mario gains an eerie power: anything that is made to wear Mario’s cap becomes Mario. Throw it on a dinosaur’s head, for instance, and that dino is instantly fused with Mario—and you, the player, find yourself playing as a dinosaur. Take control of goombas, electric poles, whatever else suits your fancy. Mario‘s vision of…

    God of War (2018)

    …testosterone-soaked glory.

    Daniel Starkey, in a retrospective article for Digital Trends, highlights some issues with the game’s combat mechanics, and especially, with its puzzles:

    … puzzles aren’t always as clever as you’d hope: There are some brain-teasers, sure. One, for instance, involves a bunch of Tetris-style blocks that you need to piece together to unlock a door. And that’s well enough, but also can’t help but feel a little contrived. Many ancient civilizations built bizarre and ridiculous temples and structures, but none, so far as we know, made contraptions like this. Compared to all the thought…

    June 9th

    Welcome back, readers!

    E3 is next week? I guess? We’ve got a very timely piece this week on the damaging effects of hype, which I enjoyed a great deal and which you can find below. On the academic circuit, it’s also conference season, and I’m looking forward to reading the thoughts and ideas that come my way from those venues.

    This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

    Inclusive Insights

    This week we’re starting with two selections on making games more inclusive,

    …

    November 2019

    Welcome, readers, to the follow-up instalment of This Month in Videogame Vlogging. If you missed what this is about, check out the October edition which, yes, admittedly we posted only last week. But now we’re caught up, just in time for the changing of the calendars.

    November brought with it the stirrings of the beginnings of the endings of the year and the decade, a time to think about maybe reflecting upon things soon. Fortunately, despite the on-coming wave of reminiscence, quite a few video makers continued their efforts highlighting how industry practices can change for the better

    …

    This Year in Videogame Blogging: 2019

    …force as the game itself:

    In practice, building structures and expanding pathways creates more camaraderie than contention. There’s no denying the strange narrative context underpinning it all?—we were, after all, extending from coast to coast in an effort to make America whole again?—but the effect of these mechanics is more romantic than unfortunate. Countless workers, united in the solidarity of their task, creating public and functional means to allow essential services to continue. The work mattered enough that players had each other’s backs and tended to the essential parts without prompting. Death Stranding waxes poetic about intertwining souls

    …

    July 11th

    …myself relating to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain in the toughest moments of our time. It’s also the story of how it came to an end in late 2020, and what followed afterwards.”

    Material Stakes

    Questions of art, exhibition, materiality, and embodiment abound in our next section with a focus on art installations, adaptation, serious games, and more.

    • Enter The Data Dungeon: Sex Work & Digital Domination | Immerse Lena Chen situates the goals of the online art installation/performance Play4UsNow in a digital landscape increasingly hostile to sex workers.
    • Getting physical with…

    Anna Anthropy on Games

    …all other culture-instead of “game culture.”

    When asked about her sexuality and how it affects her game (she’s known for games like Mighty Jill Off, for instance) she says this:

    A videogame is a space constructed out of communication, and communication is the realm in which flirtation and seduction happen, where desire and love are both expressed and explored. It’s a space for role-playing and for exploring fantasy. Of course it has an erotic nature.

    And there’s the complicity of the player, that the audience is a participant in the telling of the story.

    …